May 21, 2009

Don't Ask, Observe

Chris Clark has a perfect example of why asking customers (or people in general) for their opinions hardly ever produces immediately useful results (unless you’re studying psychology and want to prove the following two sentences): People can’t judge their own behaviour correctly and objectively. They don’t know what they want, or even how they behave.

There are only two ways to flip a card: over the horizontal edge or over the vertical. Seems pretty simple, but a flip in the wrong direction will make Side B appear upside down, and there’s no way around it but to optimize your printing for the most common flip style. All you need to know is which way that is.

Think about how you flip business cards, and what you would do to figure out how people in general flip business cards. Then read how Chris figured it out.

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designed_for_use_small

If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

You can find out more about it (and order it directly, printed or as a DRM-free ebook) on the Pragmatic Programmers website.